Don't Touch

11-06-2010, 08:18 PM

Hi, my name is Abby. I am mom to a 2yr old, 16 month old, and am 6.5 months pregnant with our third.

My 16 month old son is very strong willed -which is a fantastic quality, until he's set on doing something he shouldn't. Today, I was trying to do some dishes. *The kids are not allowed to touch the dishwasher when its open.* So my son comes over and keeps trying to touch it, grabbing at knives.
I tried just moving his hand away -Ahh Ahh Don't Touch.
I tried physically moving him away (with an Ahh Ahh Don't Touch) and giving him a toy to play with.
I tried explaining to him why we don't touch -Danger.
None of that worked. He just would either smirk and go right back to it or stand there and cry. When he'd cry, I would hug him and say "I know you're upset and want to help mom with the dishes, but some of these are dangerous." Probably beyond his level, but it certainly couldn't hurt.
At that point he just stood there and cried about it, while I hurried up and finished the dishes. I felt bad leaving him to cry like that, but I tried to distract, redirect, and reason with him.

What else could I have done? We go through this same scenario with him pushing buttons on the TV. So any suggestions would be really helpful!

Wow! It is wonderful that you have so much patience, especially with 3 little ones.

My daughter also loved to play with the dishwasher. Getting her involved is what helped. Letting her help put safe things in the dishwasher, letting her see how the tray rolled in and out. Putting her up on the counter to help me wash dishes.

Could you wait and leave the dangerous stuff in the sink til the last minute, but allow him to "help" you until then? Then you can quickly finish with the dangerous stuff and get it closed.

Although it's not always apparent to me right away, it seems there is always a "yes" in there somewhere that still maintains a balance between my wants and needs and those of my children. There are so many times when I initially hear myself saying no but figure out a way to get past it and am so so grateful that I did because I see something I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

I remember the first Halloween when I allowed DD to get candy, and she started to open it all up at once. I started to tell her no, that she couldn't eat that much candy, but I held my tongue and watched her. Turns out she had no intention of eating it. She made a really neat sculpture out of it! I was super-impressed with her creativity and building skills that day.

Hoping you find what feels good for everyone

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Thanks!
I am really making a great effort to be patient and gentle. I was finding myself being very irritable with the kids and starting to yell at them. Not only did that not work, but it made me feel bad. DD (2yr old) would always say "Mommy's grumpy" How horrible that made me feel! So I have turned towards AP to help me change my parenting habits.

Back to the issue - I try and do most of the housework while the kids nap. That way I am able to really spend time with them, instead of just being in the same house with them and us all doing our seperate activities. And that definitely helps, but isn't always practical. And I think its good for them to see me doing some housework and helping out when possible. I also try to spend some good quality time (reading, singing, rough housing) with them right before I start doing chores. My thought is that way they won't be "starved" for attention and seek it out in negative ways. Thoughts on other ways to get past this phase?

And what about pushing buttons on the TV?
I have done the exact same things. He gets that look in his eye and goes right back to it, instantly. Even if we leave the room!
I have offered him a different toys, ones that have buttons for him to push. And say "Oh you want to push buttons? Push these!" But he's so determined to touch the TV.
The last couple of days I have been trying something different. When I see him going for the TV, I grab a book and ask him if he wants to read. And of course he does. But again, that's not always practical. I'm hoping that he will just lose interest soon.
What else can I do in this situation?

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We gave up on trying to get ours to stop pushing the buttons. It's just too gratifying for them. So we bought one of those t.v. guards for about 9 bucks at the baby store. It was instant relief. I don't know what type of t.v. you have, but is it possible for you to raise your t.v. up on a shelf or wall-mounting? Sometimes childproofing is the best way to go. Otherwise you may spend all your time trying to keep them away from things.

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1. Try this experiment. Tell your child "Don't touch my nose!" and see what they immediately try to do. Kids hear the rest of the sentence more than the "don't". Well, I think everyone does--adults, too

2. Regarding getting kids involved in day-to-day activities, I thought the Continuum Concept by Jean Ludloff was really cool. She goes into this a bit in that book.

What seems to be most effective for us is if we don't want DD to do something, we tell her what we DO want her to do and explain to her why we don't want her to do something. Once I came home to see that she had colored all over the beams in our house and our back door. I told her I didn't want her to color on my house or my furniture, but that she could color on her furniture if she wanted (specific things I pointed out to her), and always color on her paper, or she could always ask me and dad for help finding something to color on. Not that she's never colored on something I didn't want her to since then, but I'm quite sure that if I had just yelled at her and told her not to color on the walls, we would have seen more of her art in unwanted places.

Of course, we have our moments and say the don't thing often enough. That's how I know it doesn't work so well! LOL

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I know I'm really late replying to this thread, but the TV buttons can be disabled so that only the remote works. My husband did that to ours and then the buttons were of no interest to dd. Maybe you could find directions for how to do that with yours.